Blogs from Middle East - page 1027

A week in Dubai - hazel and dan's family. For all our travels this was a most unique experience. much to tell behind the pics beyond the 45 degrees plus. Have attached a limited selection of pics - most pics were taken from one of the many other cameras within the camp. Camp please send indoor snowboarding pics, mall of the emirates and any group pics to make the blog complete ... read more

The lovely bunch of flowers that I was surprised with at work yesterday, from my lovely boyfriend. It certainly cheered up my day as I had just had to spend AED1245 at the doctors (approx NZ$450) On another note, I finally managed to get a snap of some of the workers lining up for their bus at the end of their work day outside Burj Dubai. Sometimes there are in excess of 1000 of them lining up waiting. It looks amazing. I also managed to find an artists impression of what the Burj Dubai area is going to look like when it is finished. ... read more

Being "extreme", like so many other facets of our life has been watered down and corrupted by crass commercialism. When chewing gum and fizzy drinks are marketed as "extreme" or "XTREEM" then you know that we have lost the plot. Robert Fitzroy who sailed the Beagle - a boat that was barely 90 feet long - half way round the world to map the coast of Tierra del Fuego was extreme. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were extreme. Ray Mears is extreme. My mate Charles is extreme. A greasy haired teenager with his trousers half way down his arse and a skateboard in a shopping precinct is not extreme, even if he has got some purple chewing gum and Blink 182 on his iPod. I know there's been photos of our trips to the desert ... read more

Geo: 36.9499, 27.4219Here is the first part:Today's favorite part of the day will undoubtedly be the shuttle bus ride from the hotel to the airport. The bus with the driver and another guy showed up about 20 minutes late. This was apparently due to their need to gas up. Luckily, we left ourselves plenty of time. We laughed about this some more as our driver wove over around and through the backstreets of Istanbul, obviously lost. I say obviously because we were revisiting scenes from National Lampoon's European Vacation when Chevy Chase cruised the same streets over and over saying, "Big Ben, Parliament!"Eventually we got loose and onto the freeway and things were looking good. We were only running about 40 minutes behind. Then our bus sideswiped a taxi. Mike was able to get video of ... read more

Geo: 41.1075, 28.7079Yes, we are starting to lose steam. Today our plan was not very ambitious. We only had the Istanbul Archeology Museum left on our to-do list. We also needed to come up with a way to get the the airport on the Asian side of the city in time for our plane tomorrow. After checking Turkeytravelplanner.com, we went to a recommended agency and arranged for a shuttle. They usually only have two per day so we were resigned to arriving at the airport many hours early (again), but luckily someone else had arranged for a shuttle to pick them up about noon so we are going to fill the shuttle going in the other direction. It's a win/win.After checking that off the list we had the rest of the day to spend at the ... read more